


Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers

by theaa



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/M, Political Marriage, will be blown out of the water by next week lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 06:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11549643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theaa/pseuds/theaa
Summary: Jon doesn’t leave his solar for hours once he learns the truth. Once they all learn the truth, that is / When Sansa learns of Jon’s real heritage she knows what she’s expected to do. She comes up with a different plan.





	1. Patterns of Fairytales

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know. Finish some of your other fics, you scream. Aren't there already a million versions of this fic? Yes, there are. But this is mine. Title taken from the album by The National.

Jon doesn’t leave his solar for hours once he learns the truth. Once they all learn the truth, that is. Petyr disappears, one sweep of his cloak and he’s gone, subsumed into the castle walls somehow. Sansa knows he’s waiting for her to come and find him, consider the path he’s cleared for her. He’s laid his trap now, but she’ll be damned if she’s going to walk into it. Littlefinger is blinded by his own ambition, and she will not let him blinker her own vision too. Not over this. Not over _Jon_.

Brienne hovers in the passage outside Sansa’s room, looking mildly confused. Davos is clearly at a loss, once again questioning the king he is trying to serve. Tormund, to whom house allegiances mean little, has shrugged the whole thing off. ‘It’s still him, isn’t it? It’s not as if his loyalty has changed is it? Can’t we just talk to him?’

Sansa knows that ultimately Tormund is right. The likelihood of Jon abandoning the Stark cause, abandoning Winterfell, abandoning the North, abandoning her, just because Bran has sent a raven and Petyr has tried to pin a red dragon to his chest - well it’s absurd. They don’t even know if it is true. But whichever way Sansa looks at it - Jon’s obvious Stark heritage, the timing of his birth - well it all adds up. Somehow, Bran is right.

 _Bran_. Sansa doesn’t understand his new powers, has only heard whisperings of gifts like the ones he professes to have, but he’s alive and at the Wall, thank God. Heading to Winterfell soon but he felt, knowing of the dragon queen’s arrival, Jon should know of their real relationship. Petyr, goddamn him, had overhead their conversations and and threatened to tell the northmen. If he did, there’s every chance of a mutiny. The North does not take kindly to Targaryens, especially those masquerading as monarchs. Sansa wonders what’s stopping him from going to the bannermen immediately for a brief second, but there’s a creeping satisfaction when she realizes that he needs her support in this announcement. Her bid for power on the grounds of Jon’s southern blood would be enough to challenge Jon’s rule - Littlefinger shouting about it himself would do little in comparison.

A year ago perhaps, when all she cared about was survival, when Petyr was her best promise of such a thing, when Jon was little more than a bastard brother she remembered with a bittersweet fondness, when things like being Queen still held some interest for her, well she might have gone to find Petyr herself.

She sits in her own chamber, alone. Down one corridor is Petyr, waiting like a stray dog in the dark, ready to latch on to any doubts she might have. Will Jon bend the knee to his Aunt, bound by these new found family bonds? Or will the the Dragon Queen, angered by another Targaryen threat to the throne, slip a blade through his chest before Jon can explain anything? Another part of her, the young girl who grew up on stories of the Targaryen dynasty, knows that yet still Daenerys might prefer to keep her new relative close to the throne in the ways of old, by marriage. And then what would become of the North?

Her mind is spiralling. Down the other corridor, she knows, Jon’s must be too. Perhaps there is not an outcome she has thought of that he hasn’t also considered. Sansa gets to her feet. Brienne, waiting outside, lurches to attention, but Sansa still her and sets forward. She turns left.

Towards the Lord’s chambers. Towards Jon.

When she knocks no one answers, but once her voice drifts through the keyhole with her plea to open the door it swings open quickly enough.

Jon looks haggard. In the space of four hours he looks worse than she’s ever seen him. His skin is ashen, paler than even usual, and his eyes are red and bloodshot. Sansa suspects he has been crying. You would too if you lost the entire person you thought you were in one letter, she thinks.

‘Sansa,’ he croaks. ‘Has Baelish told?’

‘Not that I’m aware of. My guess is he won’t… not yet, not without me. He’s waiting for me to try and take the throne myself.’

Jon blinks at her, tears sparkling at the corners of his eyes. There’s a long pause before he says, ‘and will you?’ He is so ready to be betrayed again. It’s all he’s ever known.

She makes her voice soft, gentle. ‘Jon, the people chose you as King in The North, not me. Because you’re _you_. Because you’re a good ruler - but I’ve told you that already.’

‘Because they thought I was a Stark.’

‘You are a Stark. You always were. It doesn’t matter. Can’t you see it doesn’t matter?’ As she says the words, her own belief in them grows. It doesn’t matter. He’s a Stark by blood and raised as one. This has not changed. And no enforced Targaryen bloodline can change the man stood before her, his courage and dedication, his skill with a sword, his kindness and good heart. No Targaryen can touch any of that.

‘Sansa, it changes everything,’ he says, a touch of desperation in his voice.

‘No,’ she answers vehemently. ‘It doesn’t change anything. You need me - I’ll stand by you. Lyanna, Davos, Tormund, they will too. We’ll be fine.’

‘The Dragon Queen, if she knows, she’s as likely to want me for her own throne as she is to kill me, you know that right? How can I bring the North into that?’

‘Either way, you will have to get better at negotiating, I suspect.’

The joke is dry, black humour, but Jon’s lips twitch with a rueful smile.

‘I suspect I shall.’

They lapse into a silence for a second. Sansa takes in Jon, still strapped into his jerkin, his sword propped ever ready just within reach. His hair is out its leather tie, loose and curling and longer than she remembers. It falls in front of his eyes and he jerks his head to sweep it away with a sigh.

‘I’ll tell the men at dinner tonight. I’ll have to placate them with immediate action. Within the next few days I’ll travel to Dragonstone to meet Daenerys myself. We still need the dragonglass and perhaps our new found family bonds will help me get a deal. At least I’ll know where I stand, even if it as a dead man when she considers me a threat to her throne.’

‘Jon,’ Sansa says softly, ‘don’t talk like that. You just have to persuade her you’re not.’

‘Aye, but I’ve never been much good at persuasion have I?’

Sansa’s lips purse. ‘Perhaps I should come with you.’

‘No, you’re needed here, at Winterfell.’

‘Jon -’

‘I promised to keep you safe, Sansa. Who knows what will happen at Dragonstone? You’re safest here.’

‘We’ll think about it,’ she says instead.

Sansa sighs. She doesn’t truly want to leave Winterfell, not really, but she would for Jon, knows she would be useful and necessary at Dragonstone. She drops into a seat by the fire and looks up at him, still hovering in the middle of the room, anxious.

‘So, we are cousins then.’

‘Yes.’ His answer is short, clipped. It disappoints him.

Sansa can not find it within herself to share his sense of disappointment. She knows she should be saddened by the loss of a brother, by the relationship she thought she had gained when she found him. She is sure that’s upsetting Jon - he can no longer call Robb and Arya his siblings, he’s no longer a ‘true’ Stark, Ned was never his father.

‘He is, you know. He’ll always be your father - he raised you.’

Jon smiles thinly at her ability to read his thoughts. ‘I know that’s what counts, but still…’

He feels lost, it’s obvious. Sansa doesn’t know what to say to remedy this.

Jon looks at her a second and then he squares his shoulders, as if he’s trying to claw back his purpose. ‘You’re definitely not leaving Winterfell. I may not be your brother anymore but I’m still your protector, Sansa.’

‘I can protect myself, Jon,’ she says exasperatedly. ‘honest to Gods, it doesn’t matter if you’re my brother or cousin or whatever other relation that would still be true.’

‘You’re the Lady of Winterfell. For now I’m still-’ he swallows, still uncomfortable with saying it, ‘King in the North and that makes me your protector.’

Sansa’s skin prickles with irritation. ‘You act as if you can order me about. You’re not my husband!’

They stare at each other. For too long. ‘No,’ Jon says slowly - too slowly. The thought must have occurred to him, too. ‘I am not.’

Sansa, who has always been bought up knowing about marriage, about its inherent political nature, has been betrothed for politics before, swallows. Her throat is suddenly dry.

She hadn’t thought of it before. She doesn’t know why it never crossed her mind in the hours since they’ve known the truth. The power vacuum that threatens to spill open when news of Jon’s heritage breaks, the ensured unity of the North, a way of making sure Jon never marries the Dragon Queen - it’s so frighteningly simple. They could fix it all with one quick, small ceremony.

Her first marriage was a sham, her second husband dead. A third with Jon, someone she already knows and loves in some capacity, well, like she said before - would that be so terrible?

‘You are not my husband,’ she repeats. ‘But it would make sense, wouldn’t it?’

Jon turns swiftly away, but Sansa can hear his breath catch.

‘Sansa, you can’t be serious.’

‘You thought of it too! I know you did!’

‘Sansa, no. I’ll not make you marry again, and I don’t need to. This is nonsense. You’re my sister.’

‘But I’m not! Haven’t we just said? You’re my cousin. I see nothing wrong with that!’

Jon stares resolutely out the window, out into the roiling snow storm outside. ‘Did you ever see me as your brother?’ His voice is quiet.

Sansa bites her lip. ‘Truthfully? No. I don’t think I did. When we were young you were simply there. I knew you were my brother and that the others thought of you so, but you know how hard I tried to be like my mother, so I copied her in everything. You weren’t her son, so you weren’t my brother.’

Jon heaves in a breath, he’s hurt she knows. It forces Sansa to push on through quickly. ‘And now? Jon, you’re the man who saved me, who helped take back our home, a friend who I trust and love. Brother was a fair label for our relationship. Cousin would also fit, but don’t you see that husband would too?’

Now she is the one who sounds desperate. Jon turns away from the window again. His eyes are wide and dark and there’s a glimmer that Sansa catches, something that tells her he’s not far from giving in.

‘Did you ever really see me as a sister though?’ she continues. ‘We weren’t close as children. Is it so hard a change to accept? Your last girl, she was a redhead too, I’ve heard Tormund joke about her. I know - I know that I’m supposed to be beautiful to other people. But still, do I repulse you that much?’

Jon’s eyes soften. ‘Sansa, no. You _are_ beautiful. It’s just….’ he shifts, uncomfortable. ‘I’m not a Targaryen, I won't be, nor a Lannister…’

‘No, you’re a Snow. A bastard bought up in the North. You’re a Stark by blood and you could be a Stark by marriage. What’s difficult about that?’

He doesn’t answer, moving again to stare out the window. Sansa loses patience and in one stride she is next to him, tall enough to turn his chin away from the view and angle it beneath her own.

She kisses him. The world does not stop turning. The gods do not smite them on the spot. Sansa does not even feel the initial disgust she was braced for. Jon flinches, but when she perseveres he submits to it and he never struggles. He lets out a little breath of surprise before their lips remould back together and this second kiss is different, more equal. Sansa finds that their tongues are tangling without knowing who first initiated it. Her grip on his chin loosens until she’s almost stroking the stubble of his beard, and Jon’s hand comes up to tangle in her hair, combing the ends through his fingers. It’s soft and warm and the loveliest kiss that she’s ever had.

They break away and Jon looks dumbfounded for a second, even more at a loss with the world than when she first came to his chamber.

‘Well?’ Sansa demands, her voice still a little unstable.

Jon hands are still in her hair and she feels his hand ball into a fist. His head drops to her shoulder and his breath tickles against her neck, shaky like her own.

‘I’d say damn me to hell if I believed there was one. Alright. We’ll marry.’


	2. It Never Happened

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa plays the game with skill, and Jon and Sansa talk about their upcoming marriage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken also from the the song by The National from Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers. I have literally never updated this fast, even I'm impressed. Please excuse any hasty typos that remain.

In the end, it is Petyr who comes to find her. She’s in the Godswood. Jon left to find Davos and talk to him of their plan, but Sansa’s thoughts were still freewheeling, thundering around her head. The Godswood is still and quiet and the snow crunches underneath her boots. The heart tree, which always used to unsettle her as a child, drips its red resin into the white powder beneath it. It’s a macabre, even sadistic thought, but she’s glad of the face and it’s blood like resin - it seems to be on her side, a promised end to this war - everyone who’s ever hurt her family will be gone and their bodies will bleed into the snow just like that. She hopes for it, longs for it with all her heart. Sometimes she frightens even herself. But experience has made this way, hard and brittle and out for blood. 

Petyr approaches her silently, as he always does.

‘My Lady. Looking for somewhere to gather your thoughts?’

‘And if I was surely your presence here would be counterproductive, don’t you think?’

Littlefinger laughs, shallow and short. ‘Decisions are always more easily made when discussed.’

His hands are clasped together in front, ever the picture of obedience and servitude, of course. She pauses. 

‘Jon is worried about the bannermen’s reaction.’

Petyr’s smile slides slowly across his face. ‘An understandable concern. They will surely not take this news lightly.’

‘Without Jon there is no-one to rule,’ she says, working hard to keep her voice neutral. 

‘But you know that there is, my Lady.’

‘The North has never had a queen.’

‘Not yet, but there are other queens to spare in this kingdom. It is not unheard of.’

‘No, it’s not unheard of,’ she agrees slowly. She looks away, staring at the heart tree. ‘Jon is to make the announcement at supper.’

‘Risky for him, don’t you think?’

Another pause, one she hopes Petyr will load with his own meaning. ‘We will have to wait for the men’s reaction.’

‘And then?’ Petyr’s smile splits wider, she can hear it in his voice. Sansa has to hold in her shiver of disgust.

‘And then you can say your piece, if you like.’

Her eyes flick back to him, but his face is impassive again, which she takes as a good sign. He bows to her. ‘Until then, my Lady.’

She nods back jerkily, and then he is gone. Sansa thinks her answers were evasive enough to give him hope of her taking part in his schemes. She wishes that his inevitable disappointment were enough to crush him alone. 

/

The clamouring noise of the northmen is nearly deafening. She can’t tell if they are outraged or anything else, their shouts just a blanket of noise, an initial reaction to Jon’s Targaryen heritage reveal followed swiftly by his betrothal.  

Once Jon gets them calm enough to speak he clears his throat self consciously and continues. ‘A union between myself and Sansa I hope will show you exactly where my loyalties lie. I will be a Stark by blood and my Sansa’s name, fit to carry out the North’s interests. I may be a Targaryen now, something I neither knew of or ever wanted, but I hold no love for that house. I will talk to the Dragon Queen as a member of house Stark. Will you stand with me?’

His voice is impressively steady and firm. The room falls quiet. Then a northman pulls himself to his feet. ‘Your Targaryen blood would be a risk, it’s true. But we would welcome a union between yourself and Lady Sansa. There must always be a Stark at Winterfell, and now there will be for future generations.’

She can hear Jon swallow from beside her. The issue of heirs. Something she’d conveniently pushed to the back of her brain. As had Jon, apparently.

Some other Lords are angry that the chance to set up their various children with Jon or herself has been taken away, but mostly the consensus is that Jon can stay if he marries Sansa,  _soon_. 

When she checks the corner Littlefinger usually skulks in during these meetings it is empty. A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.

/

Jon stands in the middle of her chambers, looking once more unsure of himself. Sansa slowly puts down the brush she was about to use before Jon appeared. She keeps no maids since the castle doesn’t have girls to spare, and it seems like an extravagance. Besides, she has no need of one after years without.

‘Did you have something to tell me?’

‘Davos - he thinks the wedding should be the day after tomorrow.’

Sansa nods. ‘Alright,’ she says evenly. She knows it must be done quickly, but the logistics of it will need to be thought out. Who will officiate? Who is there to give her away? ‘I still have my old wedding dress, I think. In one of the rooms from.....’ she wavers, ‘...before.’

Jon immediately takes a step towards her. ‘Sansa, no. I’ll not have you wearing that. I’d burn it if you’d show me where it was, but I’ll not make you do that either. Wear whatever you like. It doesn’t matter, after all.’

Sansa smiles at him. She’s grateful, but there’s a hint of sadness too. She truly never will have the wedding she always dreamed of as a little girl. Her wedding to Tyrion was grand and golden, like she always wished for, but she barely remembers any of the details but the feel of her fingernails biting into her palms as she walked down the aisle. She wishes not to relive a single moment of her wedding to Ramsay, but there was no denying the dress itself was pretty - Ramsay wanted to make sure everyone could see her, white as snow, a princess of winter. And yet, she did not feel beautiful.

‘Stand up for me.’ Jon’s request surprises her, enough that she automatically begins to rise out of her chair, too used to having to follow instruction. Jon flinches when he realises she’s done as he asked without question.

‘I want - I want to help dress your hair. If you’d like, that is.’ His voice is impossibly soft, almost consumed by his northern burr. Sansa blinks.

‘My hair?’

Jon nods jerkily. ‘She’d never have told you, but I dressed Arya’s hair once or twice, when she let me. Of course, hers was short and scrappy, but - well, I was always fascinated by the ways in which girls wore their hair. It seemed - I don’t know - important.’

Sansa’s lips twitch into a smile, but inside her heart clenches a little. Jon is more sensitive then she gives him credit, and always has been. She thinks of him as a little bastard boy, all too conscious of his birth, looking at her mother and all their other highborn ladies and their intricate braids. Perhaps knowing, before he thought of the night’s watch, that if ever he were to take a wife she would not have to wear her hair so delicately. Her birth would surely match only his own. He would never be like Robb, with a true-born Lady as his wife. He must have known that. Perhaps that’s why hair held his attention so. 

‘Is that why you wear yours so long? Shall I braid it for you too?’ she teases. Jon flashes her a rare grin in answer and moves awkwardly towards her.

She lets Jon take her seat and unsure of what else to do given her height, she settles on the flagstones by his feet. Jon opens his knees so she can shuffle into the space between them. His body, leaning over above her, feels like a protective bubble. Around them the candles flicker and the fire crackles, a soft orange glow to the room. Jon picks up the brush she discarded and his fingers settle lightly on her shoulders, just where the neckline of the robe she has on over her nightshift meets the exposed skin of her neck. 

‘Can I?’

‘Yes.’

The hairbrush tickles her scalp so faintly at first she thinks she’s imagining it, too highly aware of Jon’s movements, but he sweeps the brush down the length of her hair right to the very ends and then brings the brush up to repeat the action, smooth and delicate. When he catches a tangle he apologises swiftly and Sansa can feel tears beginning to gather in the corners of her eyes, not because he’s hurt her, but because it’s been  _so long_ , so very, very long, since anyone she cared about has shown her such tenderness. 

Jon gathers her hair into one braid down her back. It’s loose and messy and he misses strands of her hair frequently and has to start again, but Sansa doesn’t mind. The feel of his fingers combing steadily through feels like an anchor somehow, tying her to him, to the world again. She hasn’t felt so simple and  _present_  in months. When he’s done he finds he hasn’t got anything to fasten the braid with, so he uses his own cord of leather. The braid falls back to her shoulders, and Sansa tries to discreetly wipe the tears away.

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Jon answers gruffly, sounding embarrassed. 

When she stands up Jon is already facing her, and he reaches up to swipe at the wetness underneath her eyes, but says nothing. Without knowing why, Sansa’s hands comes up to catch his wrist and she pulls his hand gently down, so he’s cupping her cheek instead. She steps closer. Jon’s thumb swipes over her skin, ever so slowly. He sighs. One of them is always sighing, it seems. 

‘Sansa, I-’ Jon starts, but Sansa doesn’t want to hear anything that might ruin this, and the slight warning in his voice promises to do so.

‘Don’t.’

Jon’s thumb moves lower to sweep over the cracked skin of her lower lip before he gathers her into his arms. Not to kiss her but just to hold her close, as close as they were when she rushed into his arms at Castle Black. Her head nestles into his shoulders again, and the skin of his neck burns warm by her cheek, smelling of soap and leather. It’s so close she only has to turn her head a fraction more to plant a kiss there, as chaste as one on the cheek would be, but once she does she feels Jon shudder. She does it again,a few more times and for longer, until she hears Jon moan. Tiny and barely above a whisper, but it makes her stop. The sound does something she doesn’t recognise, tightens her nipples under her shift, makes her shiver.

‘Sansa,’ he says. ‘Sansa, stop.’

He pulls himself away from her, almost falling over the chair he was sat on earlier. 

‘I’m sorry,’ she says flatly. She isn’t though. It had felt right. The close contact had felt more comforting, more  _exciting_ , than anything. 

Jon pushes a hand through his hair and groans. The noise isn’t unlike his moan from before, and it even has the same effect. Sansa feels itchy and unsettled. The lights in the room are too dim. She wants --

Well, she knows what she wants.

‘Jon?’

‘It’s too soon. Gods, it was only this morning we found out.’

‘I kissed you this afternoon,’ she says pointedly.

‘To prove a point. A point you proved far too well. You proved that I - Gods, that I want my sister.’ Again, he looks disgusted at himself. 

‘We’re going to be married, Jon. It’s not wrong.’

‘I just -- I just need to get used to the idea,’ he says finally, his arm dropping flatly back to his side. 

Sansa can feel herself shuttering off again. He’s making it difficult. She didn’t expect to desire him, but there’s  _something_  between them. She doesn’t know if it’s something special or rather if it’s just the usual friction between a man and a woman, the opportunity to sate their needs with someone they feel safe with after so long - well, would that be so terrible? A question that’s becoming a mantra in her own head. 

But he doesn’t want her, refuses to indulge this part of himself. Deep down she knows it isn’t, not really, that surely he’ll come around, but it feels like another rejection. 

‘Well you have one day to get used to it.’ She has to work hard to keep all the venom out of her voice, but some leaks through anyway. Jon stares at her, his mouth opening and closing as he searches for a response, but finally he nods at her and leaves. The click of the door feels horribly final.

Sansa climbs into her bed, exhausted by everything. Marriage is politics and politics is always personal, but this feels like too much, too hard, too close to a heart she’s tried since Joffrey to protect. She twists onto her side and brings her knees to her chest, but her fingers find the fastening of her braid, smoothing over the thin sliver of suede that holds it together. The memory of Jon’s soft hands on her hair helps settle her again, and she clings on to that peaceful feeling as she drifts to sleep. 


End file.
